Causing a Commotion ~ “Downing Street Memo” is old news.

From the article:

Regime change had been U.S. policy since October 31, 1998, when President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act. It was not a state secret.

Heavy discussion on that and other items that Kerry and Kerrey said on the Senate Floor here:

John Kerry Reportedly To Present "Downing Street Memo" To Congress (New Info)

The only way to have prevented the Iraq Battle is for the world to be united and to force Saddam out. Saddam successfully bribed France, Germany, Russia and other countries. France and Russia are UN Security Council veto holders and they were prepared to veto any resolution and thereby keep Saddam in power. The US made the mistake of following Blair's idea and went the UN route, which gave Saddam time to plan the post-war campaign of terror. Blair also gave Chirac the impetus to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution. Tony Blair has been magnificent in the war on terror, but following his 'legalistic' political advice has been a disaster for the US and a catastrophe for Chirac. Blair now won't put the EU Constitution to a referendum. Hehehehe.

Lesson: Don't take foreign policy advice from Tony Blair (or any Social Democrat).

So then when that English visitor said he "was going inside for a fag and a beer" I shouldn't have hit him?

LOL. "Fag" has yet another meaning in Brit-speak, at least for boys educated in "public" schools (i.e., private boarding schools).

To be a "fag" meant to act as a personal servant to an older boy. Polishing his shoes, for example. (Or, as Roald Dahl wrote regarding his boarding school experience, warming the toilet seat in an unheated latrine before the older boy needed to use it.)

But it did not mean the younger boy was a sex slave.

The word for that was "tart."

I learned this from C. S. Lewis's remarkably frank reminiscences of his boarding school days.

Conclusion:

But if Dearlove meant the former, he should be called upon to substantiate his charge. It can be weighed against the exhaustive investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on prewar intelligence assessments in Iraq. The committee examined this very question, whether the White House had pressured the intelligence community to reach predetermined conclusions supporting the case for war. The investigation found no evidence that “administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities” or that “the Vice President's visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, or did pressure analysts to change their assessments.” One would think that the Senate investigation would have somewhat more weight than the secondhand impressions of a foreign intelligence officer, but if Mr. Dearlove is able to elaborate, one hopes he will.

The memo itself notes that the British assumed that Saddam had limited WMD capabilities — and the September 24, 2002, British white paper on the topic spelled out exactly what Whitehall believed to be the facts. Surely, this was not the result of pressure from the vice president or any other American officials.

I think the fact that the Downing Street Memo had once been classified has a lot to do with its current notoriety. People might suppose that a “secret” document must ipso facto be important. But not always, and not in equal measure. The section of the memo dealing with strategic planning, yes, that was worth keeping close hold on. But the speculations about the inner workings of the American government? Sounds like the same things one could have heard on any newscast. Looking at the document in context it is hard to see what the commotion is about. Most of what might be thought sensational has already been written about elsewhere, to little fanfare. The charge of intelligence fraud (if it is such a charge) has already been investigated and found baseless. And the allegations that the president had already decided to go to war and was thus deceiving the American people are personal opinions based on unsubstantiated impressions from unnamed sources.

A little help here, please. A Lib I know is now calling into question the use of the word "But" in the statement:

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Is the writer using "But" to mean the opposite of the previously stated?

Lib claim:

It doesn't say that policy followed from facts and intelligence, it says it was the other way around.

I am having a brain dump and this is probably so obvious that I will kick myself for not seeing it.

Just got in. Didn't see your question until now. I thought the sentence beginning with the word "But" was ambiguous, if not a non-sequitur. It proves nothing. However, we do know that the memo was based on conjecture months before Bush got Senate approval and the last of five unanimous Security Council resolutions re: Saddam, so I wouldn't let the referenced Lib put his own interpretation on the paragraph. More ammo available at:

A Fix on Downing Street: About that supposed smoking-gun memo.

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